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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs: Together at D

The highlight of the D5 conference has to be Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both on stage together last night, talking about working together over the years.

The long-awaited panel started with videos, first from an October 1983 early Macintosh sales event with Jobs playing the "dating game" with Gates, Software Publishing Corp.'s Fred Gibbons and Lotus Development's Mitch Kapor. Kapor and Gibbons were also in the audience, which was great to see -- particularly Fred, who I hadn't seen in years (he's now at Stanford.) Another video showed Jobs introducing Gates via satellite at a Mac event in 1997, with both talking about how they wanted Apple and Microsoft to work together.

And that pretty much set the tone for the evening, with a lot of discussion about how the two have worked together over the years, and the respect they have for each other.

Jobs said Gates built the first software company in the industry, and was focused on software before anyone else. Gates said that Jobs saw back in 1977 the dream of a mass market machine, and talked about how Apple bet the company on the Macintosh, and talked about how Jobs has pursued the goals of building new devices "with taste and elegance." Jobs pointed out that each of them was lucky to have great partners and to have attracted great people.

They talked about first working together when Apple hired Microsoft to port its floating-point Basic to the Apple II for $31,000, but also talked about how Microsoft has bet so much on the Macintosh, a period that Gates described as the most fun. There was a lot of discussion about fitting software in the 128K Mac, and how the Mac OS took 14K of that. (Contrast that with today's machines that mostly have a gigabyte or more.)

They had some laughs about the period before Jobs returned to Apple, and at the expense of former Apple CEO Gil Amelio. Jobs attributed a saying to Amelio: " Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom leaking water and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction."Jobs said that when he returned to Apple one of the issues was to understand that Apple wasn't going to beat Microsoft; instead, Apple had to remember who Apple was. Jobs talked about how Microsoft was the biggest software developer writing for the Mac; and Gates explained how that has been a great business for us.

Jobs was asked about the current "I'm a Mac" commercials; and said he art of the commercials is not to be mean but for the guys to like each other. Gates didn't say anything, but certainly looked skeptical.

In the end, Jobs said Apple too was a software company, one that sold its software in very pretty packages. But he said Apple does not have a belief that Mac is going to take over 80 percent of the PC market; instead it's happy when it gains a point of market share. But quoted Alan Kay in saying that " people that love software want to do their own hardware."

Gates said he could resist that. He talked about the innovation and variety that came from having multiple companies doing hardware around a set of software, and pointed not only to the PC market, but to Microsoft's efforts in phones and in robotics, where he said "we're learning from the ecosystem." Jobs said that in the consumer market, one can make a strong case that, outside of Windows on PCs, it's hard to see other examples of hardware and software working super well together. Gates said it was good to try both approaches, and did point out that "in the PC market, the variety has the higher share."

Both pressed the advantages of rich clients working together with Internet services, as opposed to thin client approaches. Both agreed that now is a great period in the technology industry, with Gates talking about what natural interface (speech, ink, touch screens, visual recognition, etc.) and 3D interfaces can do, and Jobs talked about "Post-PC devices" like the iPod and the forthcoming iPhone and how they would work with traditional PCs how lots of things look risky, and that's a great thing, because it drives excitement in the industry. In general, as has been their habits in recent years, Gates talked a lot about things that Microsoft was working on, while Jobs was more reserved on that point.

Both also talked about the need for passion in starting and running a great company, and the need to hire great people. When asked what the other person did right, Gates said " I'd give a lot to have Steve's taste," for picking great people, and for making design choices on products. Jobs said he envied how well Microsoft worked with partners, which he said Apple didn't do well in its early days.

In the end, Jobs summed up the relationship between himself and Gates, quoting the Beatles: "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead."

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